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Thursday, August 25, 2011

My Changing Retail Landscape

A really remarkable amount of my household expenditures goes to Amazon, and Sam's Club. Just interesting to think about how much business has migrated away from traditional outlets, in particular electronics retailers (half or more of the Amazon purchases) and grocery stores (3/4 of the Sam's purchases). Not saying it is good or bad, just interesting. (Well, actually it is good, for me as a consumer, obviously, or I woulldn't be shopping there.)

5 comments:

I think I am one of the last holdouts of the Amazon empire. I do buy an occasional thing there, but not very much. In general, I buy very little on line. Sam's however gets a HUGE portion of my grocery / household budget.

My latest discovery for a reason to love Amazon/eCommerce: odd size shoes! Just TRY finding a 12-1/2 EE in a store. Did I mention that they let you pre-sort for your size--no need to get interested in a model, only to find out it isn't available in your size. (I know I sound like such an Amazon fanboy, but credit where credit is due.)

Your memory is accurate, Noelle! But that was late 1990s. They *never* seemed to be the price leader. But then sometime around 2001, they did a huge about-face. It actually took me a few years to catch on.